The Best Resolution Is to Follow Your Integrity Regardless of Your Politics; orig. title: A Conundrum that has No Easy Answers

A Conundrum that has No Easy Answers

Published on Monday, August 12, 2013, and updated Tuesday, August 13, 2013, reporters Rocco Parascandola, Jennifer Fermino and Dareh Gregorian, reporters for the New York Daily News, wrote a website article for the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, that caused a federal judge, Shira Schneider Scheindlin to claim the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional on Monday and appointed a federal monitor to oversee the program – a move Mayor Bloomberg warned could have deadly consequences.

“There is just no question that stop-question-frisk has saved countless lives. And we know that most of the lives saved, based on the statistics, have been black and Hispanic young men,” Mayor Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall, where he denounced the finding by Judge Scheindlin that cops had been making “unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks” based on race.

Mayor Bloomberg countered by saying, “It’s worth remembering that as recently as 1990, New York City averaged more than six murders a day. Today, we’ve driven that down to less than one murder a day.

“Think about what that change really means: if murder rates over the last 11 years had been the same as the previous 11 years, more than 7,300 people who today are alive would be dead” – and many of those lives were saved by stop and frisk.

“I worry for my kids and I worry for your kids,” the mayor exclaimed.

In her pair of much-anticipated rulings, Judge Scheindlin said stop and frisk is a perfectly legal practice – but the way the NYPD was carrying it out, including making hundreds of thousands of stops without reason, was not.

“To be very clear, I am not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk,” Scheindlin wrote.

“But in its current form, ‘the policy encourages the targeting of young black and Hispanic men based on their prevalence in local crime complaints. This is a form of racial profiling,’” she said.
In a related article, Judge Scheindlin said she found the city “acted with deliberate indifference toward the NYPD’s practice of making unconstitutional stops.”

She appointed former city corporation counsel Peter Zimroth as a monitor to oversee reforms, because “ensuring the people are not seized and searched by police on the streets of New York City without a legal basis is an important interest meriting judicial protection.” She wants Zimroth to start his monitoring program immediately.

The judge also ordered a one-year pilot program to outfit officers with cameras worn on their bodies. She related that she believed the cameras would “alleviate some of the mistrust that has developed between the police and the black and Hispanic communities,” and that the video recordings “will be helpful to members of the NYPD who are wrongly accused of inappropriate behavior.”

She noted that police made 4.4 million stops between 2004 and 2012, and frisked over 2 million people. “In 98.5% of the 2.3 million frisks, no weapon was found,” she wrote.

“The collateral damage to innocent New Yorkers is substantial,” she said.

I would be interested in learning in what way such “collateral damage to innocent New Yorkers” is substantial?

Critics of the current problem state that Mayor Bloomberg’s favored program, “stop-question-frisk” program, claim it’s an infringement of the Fourth Amendment.”

That amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. Obviously, the current practices that Mayor Bloomberg endorses are a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.

On the other hand, if Mayor Bloomberg’s favored “stop-question-frisk” program does appreciably save lives, as he claims it does, then to disband that program is a violation of our unalienable Rights, as stated in our Declaration of Independence, which are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Since the seeking of “Life,” is one of our freedoms that are protected by our Constitution, our government has an obligation to assure that such a right is safe guarded. The question then arises, which is more important, maintaining life or protecting the Fourth Amendment?

The only way to help resolve this issue is to conduct a controlled study, where the Fourth Amendment is safeguarded by disallowing the continuation of the “stop-question-frisk” program for a specified extended time and, at the same time, employing that program for the same amount of time, and then determining which program is more viable or if the “stop-question-frisk “plan saves more lives?

It seems fairly obvious the United States Supreme Court will ultimately have to get involved to resolve this conundrum.